DIALING 809 CODE? IT MAY BE TELEPHONE SCHEME

The call comes while you aren't home. The voice on the answering machine urges you to return the call to an 809 area code right away.

If you don't, you'll be in serious legal trouble, the caller warns.

But if you do return the call, police say, you could become a victim of an expensive international telephone trap.

Police in South Florida don't know how big the scheme is, but they've been issuing warnings to consumers for months - long enough that it has expanded to other Caribbean area codes such as 268, 664 and 758.

They say the scheme works like this: You receive a beep on your pager or a cleverly cryptic message on your answering machine telling you that a relative is injured or in jail, or that you've won a prize, or that you are past due on a bill. Whatever the message, you are urged to return the call immediately.

Concerned or curious, you dial the number and hear a recorded message asking you to hold, or someone speaking broken English keeps you on the line until you finally hang up. By then it is too late. You know the number is long distance, but you probably don't realize you will be charged international rates.

Caribbean nations worked out a deal to boost telephone traffic to their countries by providing a commission to pay-per-call providers. Each time a consumer calls the country, the nation's telephone company and the pay-per-call provider make money.

Because each country determines its own telephone rates, there is no limit to the per-minute charge. It's all legal. But it becomes a scam when consumers in the United States make the call without knowing that they will be billed at international long-distance rates.

In most cases, to make an international telephone call you must first dial 011, the country and city code and then the number. But some countries, particularly in the Caribbean, use a three-digit code for their country and then seven numbers, just like the United States.

In the past, the 809 country code or area code covered most of the Caribbean. That's changing, though. Caribbean states are switching to individual country codes, but the 809 code still works while they phase in the new numbers. Swindlers can still use 809 for their calls, or new numbers like 264 for Anguilla, 345 for Cayman Islands, 473 for Grenada or 876 for Jamaica.

All this comes while the United States continues to add area codes. The country has more than 150 area codes, including eight in Florida.

Early on, the swindlers used advertisements in newspapers, magazines and fliers to offer job opportunities, loans or discount travel. The information usually was positioned at the end of a long recorded message to keep you on the line longer, racking up charges by the minute.

Now they have turned to paging and even e-mailing their victims.

While the Federal Trade Commission governs the way U.S. companies conduct business with pay-per-call service, it doesn't regulate international companies. But that may change in coming months.

"We are examining issues relating to all different pay-per-call services and the possibility of expanding the rule to govern services other than 900, including international services," said Marianne Schwanke, of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.